I've been reviewing Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers trilogy (I Hunt Killers, Game) for the Magazine and am about to start reading the just-released final volume, Blood of My Blood. So I was very excited to get my hands on Lucky Day: An I Hunt Killers Prequel by Barry Lyga (Little, Brown, April 2014), one of several digital-only novella prequels to the series.

Lucky Day follows Sheriff G. William Tanner (a mentor and father figure to the novels' protagonist Jasper "Jazz" Dent, who makes a very brief appearance here) as he investigates two cases in the last weeks before a county election. One girl has been abducted and is presumed murdered, and another is found raped and killed not long after — brutal violence the likes of which small-town Lobo's Nod and its surrounding county have not seen since pioneer days.

As the cases go colder and the community's fears grow, G. William's chances of re-election to sheriff's office dwindle. But then he makes a connection between the cases, follows an uncomfortable hunch about an upstanding community member, and finds himself face to face with the killer.

Appropriately, given its adult protagonist, the tone of this prequel is very different from the novels'. Instead of Jazz's teenage first-person narrative, here a partially omniscient third-person narrator relates G. William's (very mature) concerns and experiences. His guilt about the cases potentially going unsolved, coupled with grief over his wife's recent death, sends him into a near-suicidal depression. Perhaps this novella is better suited to adult readers of gritty hardboiled detective/jaded cop novels (I'm thinking fans of Jo Nesbø or Tana French) rather than the teen audience the trilogy is aimed at. That said, as a fan of those types of books myself, I enjoyed this suspenseful look at G. William's — and the infamous Hand-in-Glove killer's — earlier career.

Available for various e-readers; $1.99. Recommended for young adult and older users.